On 23 March 1783, an important concert took place in Vienna, playing a considerable role for Mozart’s reputation in the imperial capital, where he had resided since 1781. It is obvious that Mozart wanted to be heard in both what he had composed prior to 1781, as well as in his more recent works. From the Salzburg repertoire, he borrowed the ‘Haffner’ Symphony. To this he added the long concertant movement for wind instruments from the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade. Here we also find two piano concertos (one from Salzburg, and the latest, doubtless composed for the occasion), several arias from earlier operas (Lucio Silla, Idomeneo) or again, recently written. Although he played his concertos, he also improvised keyboard variations and even a fugue (because the emperor was in attendance)... An historic concert to be rediscovered, as if you were there!

Kristian Bezuidenhout's cycle of Mozart's complete keyboard music concludes with this double album, which contains some real rarities that are ideally suited to Bezuidenhout's tough, wiry style. As such, it may not be the item to pick if you want to sample the series, but it's often fascinating. Bezuidenhout's basic modus operandi is to give considerable weight even to works conventionally thought of as light, using his powerful fortepiano (a copy of an 1805 Walter instrument by builder Paul McNulty) and its unequal-temperament tuning to bring out dissonances and sinewy lines rarely heard elsewhere. Here he has some really radical experiments to work with, and even if you find Bezuidenhout's readings idiosyncratic at times, you'll likely appreciate the likes of the Modulating Prelude F-C, K. deest (it is indubitably by Mozart), or the Menuetto in D major, K. 355, with its daring harmonies barely matched elsewhere in Mozart's output. Several of the sonata-form movements were abandoned by Mozart for one reason or another and have been completed by Mozart scholar Robert Levin; the joints are hard to hear. Some pieces, such as the Modulating Prelude and the Four Preludes, K. 284a, are examples of Mozart's improvisational abilities, which were rarely captured in notation. In the larger and more usual works, Bezuidenhout applies a heavy touch to the Piano Sonatas K. 279 and 280, and to three large variations sets, which are generally given a touch of French elegance. But in the Nine Variations on a Minuet by Duport, K. 573, Bezuidenhout achieves utterly distinctive results in a work that has almost no harmonic content and is completely about register and space. Bezuidenhout's Mozart is, to be sure, a matter of taste, but this is a fine conclusion to his series.

This performance of Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384, is led by the conductor and countertenor René Jacobs, an artist associated with the historical performance movement, and is accompanied by the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, an ensemble of which the same is true. It is, however, anything but a historical performance; rather it is one featuring radical innovation. This is the last of a cycle of major Mozart operas by Jacobs, and it offers the fast tempi, tough, vigorous spirit, and dramatic insight that have generally characterized the others. The treatment of Mozart's semi-serious opera about the rescue of a woman held in the compound of a Turkish nobleman, however, is entirely novel. Die Entführung aus dem Serail is a Singspiel, a German-language opera in which the vocal numbers are interspersed with spoken dialogue, not recitatives. Jacobs has personally rewritten this dialogue into straightforward contemporary German, and if that weren't enough, accompanies it with fortepiano improvisations that comment on the action. This has a very curious effect akin to the texture of a silent film, and it's going to rub listeners in necessarily individual ways. Jacobs' aim is to get rid of the stop-start quality endemic to the Singspiel, and it must be said that whatever you think of the method, he accomplishes his goal. The best way to look at this performance is that if you take it on its own terms, it succeeds. Cutting the pauses between the dialogue sections and the arias down to a fraction of a second, Jacobs creates natural transitions between the dialogue and the set pieces. This quality is set against the spectacular vocal virtuosity of the music, and the effect is of a basic flow that from time to time explodes into technical fireworks like Konstanze's "Martern aller Arten" (CD one, track 22). Sample soprano Robin Johannsen here; to these ears, she's remarkable. In general, without performers who were as persuasive as actors as they were as singers, this interpretation would have been disastrous. But Jacobs shapes the whole thing into what he wants. It may still be too strange for you, but it's bold in the best way.

The entire creation of the world in an hour a quarter… it had to be through Haydn’s extraordinary powers of concentration that this insane wager could possibly succeed; others would not even dare attempt it. The Creation, dating from 1798, is one of the most ultimate and powerful of Haydn’s masterpieces. The great composer was always a master of surprise, and his invention of the Big Bang in musical form – including an introduction proclaiming ‘And then there was light’ – is chorally orchestrated to phenomenal effect. The work also retains a wonderful description of the various creations of the Lord; the extravagant evocation of whales remains an intense moment of orchestral invention, and the score is full of a genius which Beethoven had merely tapped into… Philippe Herreweghe has chosen to focus on a certain transparency of place, rather than perpetuating the traditional, bombastic dramatic gestures of orchestras within the German sphere. And, thus, the score gains greater clarity.